Information Architecture for Librarians

orThe top 10 things you can do

to improve your website

What is IA?Peter Morville & Louis Rosenfeld:

The art & science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability and findability

Why is it Important?

• You can’t have a site that that meets the needs of all users without some structure

• Keeps stuff organized, usable, and findable

• Flexible and scalable

• Provides room for growth

Why Library Websites?

• We are the information people, but most librarians don’t understand IA

• Many bad examples

• We don’t allow chaotic shelves (well, we try...), so why not the same emphasis on our websites?

Home Pages

• Identify the site, establish the brand

• Set the tone and personality of the site

• Allows people to do something right away

• Should reflect personality of the library

Pathway Pages

• Gateway pages to secondary content

• Great for categories of stuff you can’t put on the homepage

• An additional way to navigate

Finding Stuff

• There should be five ways of finding anything in your site:– Search– Site Map or Index– Pathways, browsing, etc.

• But...ease of finding them is better than multiple ways of finding

URLs

• They’ve lost their purpose

• It can be used as breadcrumbs

• Length & Organization

• Index pages

• lowercase letters

• Naming conventions/labeling

Folders

• lowercase

• Short--less than 10 letters

• Should represent broad topic areas & fit with navigation

• index pages can be your pathfinder pages

Scrolling

• So many answers

• Don’t scroll on homepage or pathway pages

• Other pages, scrolling is OK but be reasoned

Writing

• People read in an “F” pattern

• Break it up--blocks of text are boring

• Bullet points are best

• Active voice

• Don’t Rehash the same thing over and over

Page Creep

• Don’t allow similar pages to be written -- create one good page instead

• Each page has a purpose

• Each page has a home

Tutorials, Guides, etc.

• Why do we have so many names?

• Pick one, or define them all

Accessibility

• Every page has a title field

• Each link meaningful and discrete (no “click here”)

• All images have descriptions

• Bulleted lists are lists

• Tables only for tabled content

Conclusion

• IA is an art and a science

• There are no right answers

• Trust your instinct

• Take risks and trust your intuition

• It is just a website, no one is going to die

Jenny Emanuel

emanuelj@illinois.edu

jennyemanuel.com